Samoa joined the world in celebrating International Jazz Day over the weekend with events coinciding with the celebration last Friday and Saturday evenings.

The brief musical respite was planned by the Samoana Jazz and Arts Festival Boards of Samoa and American Samoa.

In Samoa “Samoana Jazz” featured a series of events including a conch-shell greeting of the dawn as the first country to see the light of a new day.

While last Friday evening a 48-minute documentary film, "The Untold Jazz Story" on music and jazz in Samoa and the American territory, the birthplace of jazz in the Pacific, was shown at the Sails Restaurant.

The event also featured live music by Shadze of Samoa accompanied by local musicians.

Among other aspects of Samoa’s music heritage, the documentary introduced viewers to Mavis Rivers, the Pacific's Queen of Jazz described by Frank Sinatra as "the purest voice in jazz" comparable to the late great Ella Fitzgerald.

Island Jazz in American Samoa, the last country on earth to see the sun set on International Jazz Day, featured gifted local musicians jamming live from 5.00pm to  7.00pm at Freddies Beach, Fogagogo. 

The event closed with a fire knife dance tribute to the late Feddie Letuli, father of the Samoan fire knife dance (siva afi).

According to a Samoana Jazz statement, the people of Samoa and American Samoa have learnt how to navigate life under various levels of lockdown and other disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the musical respite is the culmination of planning by the Samoana Jazz and Arts Festival Boards of the two Samoas.

This year’s flagship Jazz Day event, a spectacular All-Star Global Concert, featured performances by some of the world’s most accomplished jazz artists staged in the UN General Assembly Hall, New York. 

A worldwide webcast of the concert started at 10.00am Samoa time on Sunday (on the UNESCO website, YouTube, Facebook, and at jazzday.com). The 2022 All-Star Global Concert made a powerful statement in support of peace, healing and unity through a diverse series of performances by leading jazz artists from around the globe.

Concerts throughout the world emphasised the importance of jazz as a means of achieving unity and peace through dialogue and diplomacy. 

International Jazz Day is chaired and led by UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay and legendary jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock, who serves as a UNESCO Ambassador for Intercultural Dialogue and Chairman of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz.